28a. [1948–94, in South Africa] APARTHEID ERA. The Times needs to use an en-dash here in the clue, not a hyphen, And oh yes I checked the newspaper version .pdf.

48a. [Bitter rivals] SWORN ENEMIES.

Teal, eider, and nene. That’s … a kind of cute. And it’s a compact crossword theme. The wink-wink of it is that those are three fairly common examples of cruciverbal avifauna. However, explicitly acknowledging that would take it out of the Monday realm. So it’s a soft-boiled easter egg.

I liked both of the long downs. 11d [Dressed to the nines] GUSSIED UP, 34d [Baddie] NOGOODNIK.

Re pannonica’s passing remark about an en dash’s being needed for a range of years in NYT clue 28a, I was a bit startled, as I don’t believe the NYT ever uses it, and I also thought that was a matter of house style, not right or wrong. Upon doing a little research, I do find that more and more online general guides are asking for en dashes for a range, as was not the case decades ago. However, according to The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage, 5th edition, the house rule is that the en dash is to be used only for a minus sign. And according to the Wikipedia article on the dash, “The preference for an en dash instead of a hyphen in ranges is a matter of style preference, not inherent orthographic ‘correctness’; both are equally ‘correct’, and each is the preferred style in some style guides. For example, APA style uses an en dash in ranges, but AMA style uses a hyphen.”

En-dashes for ranges is something I feel I’ve been doing for ages, but perhaps my memory is playing tricks on me. Nevertheless, it makes logical as well as aesthetic sense to me.

Perhaps I haven’t called it out in relation to the NYT crosswords because I do them almost exclusively in .puz format these days and have assumed it’s an artifact of translation, but after last week’s imbroglio with the doubled clue values appearing in only the “newspaper version” .pdf and in neither the .puz version nor the “regular” .pdf format, I consulted that version on Monday and felt compelled to comment.

Hi, pannonica! I’ve only just checked back now to see if there was feedback on my comments. Like you, I get excited about punctuation, so it was fun to look into this. It is indeed the case that the use of en dashes for ranges is currently far more widespread than I had realized, though I emphasized what I thought was correct, that it is not a matter of right and wrong. You could very well cite plenty of sources for the opposite.

It’s probably too late to ask, but I still don’t get regarding the WSJ what puns on “bye” have to do with “cyber.” (FWIW, I’ve been a book editor forever, and en dashes are always used for ranges. However, for typists obviously not, which can justify a lot.)